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New Additions - Part Two New quotes that we haven't even had time to categorize yet!
Oh, go and play your silly game. – Cheryl Ryan (and millions of other chess widows) Paradoxically, what one often needs in these 'positional' lines is a sharp tactical eye. – John Watson (on the English Opening) You can permit yourself any liberty in the opening except the luxury of a passive position. – Grigory Sanakoev (World CC Champion) To play for a draw, at any rate with White, is to some degree a crime against chess. – Mikhail Tal Frankly, the King's Indian Defense is a riskier undertaking for Black than the King's Gambit is for White. – David Bronstein. One must choose opening systems of small popularity because the positional themes of these systems are not well known. – Mikhail Botvinnik. The art of treating the opening stage of the game correctly and without error is basically the art of using time efficiently. – Svetozar Gligoric. If (Black) is going for victory, he is practically forced to allow his opponent to get some kind of well-known positional advantage. – Mikhail Tal. Today, weak squares and weak pawns are self-inflicted in order to mislead the opponent; open lines are ceded so as to save the rooks for other more promising plan. – David Bronstein. If you play the King's Indian don't be afraid to be a pawn down. – Garry Kasparov. Do you know my theory of how Capablanca played? He always tried to exchange one bishop, so that he should have no problems about how to arrange his pawn chain. Then he exchange one rook, if possible. Then he had no problems about which rook to place on the only open file. – David Bronstein. To get squares you gotta give squares. – Bobby Fischer. Perceiving when a game reaches a crisis is one of the greatest skills in chess. – Ludek Pachman. As sometimes happens, a long think in the opening is followed by unsound strategical decisions, as the player feels somewhat compelled to justify his investment of time by unusual play. – Joel Lautier For in the entire chess universe there is nothing more patient than an immovable object. Petrosian - a short, swarthy Armenian with a Nixonesque five o’clock shadow - had one of the lowest centers of chess gravity ever known. His match strategy was to squat on the world title much as an amateur wrestler spreads his arms and legs on a mat and challenges his opponent to dislodge him. – Larry Parr Just ignore my girlfriend sitting behind me in the gallery. She's the one in the front chair with the tight semi-transparent halter-top, in the micro-mini skirt. – Walter Browne Strategically bad, but it's not a positional game any more. You just close your eyes and attack. – Peter Leko Avoid marriage and family life if you want to keep improving. – Lev Psakhis Strong chess players get married all the time, but how often do married people become strong chess players? – Randy Carson All the answers are on the board. Just like in life, whatever you give out in this game is what you get back. – Orrin Hudson The most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents. – Eric Hoffer The money and the women. – Jeremy Silman (when asked what had attracted him to chess) The year leading up to Fischer - Spassky 1972 was filled with extraordinary chess drama. In three candidates matches played in 1971, Fischer scored 18 ½ - 2 ½ or nearly 90 percent against super-GMs Bent Larsen and Tigran Petrosian and world title candidate GM Mark Taimanov. One calculation in the days before rating inflation put Fischer’s performance at 2939 for these matches. Against Larsen he played chess at a 3060 clip. His score of 9 ½ - 3 ½ in two matches against the unbeatable Petrosian embarrassed stalwart Fischer Haters. His performance in the Herceg Novi world blitz championship in April 1970, where he scored 19 - 3 to finish 4 ½ points clear of the strongest speed field ever assembled, and his evisceration of a strong contingent in the Manhattan Chess Club Blitz Tournament in August 1971, where he scored an extraordinary 21 ½ - ½ - well, these two results with a combined score of 40 ½ - 3 ½ led to a lot of head scratching. – Larry Parr Botvinnik thought he was champion in everything: chess, politics, economics, and including, by the way, computers. Because you know, for 30 years he worked in the wrong direction in computers. – Yuri Averbakh Every war ends with a peace treaty. – Garry Kasparov (on his reconciliation with FIDE and Ilyumzhinov) We play worse chess, basketball, tennis because we have the job of bringing into the world all those clever men who do it better. – Milunka Lazarevic Karpov, the dyed-in-the-wool opportunist, has never been thwarted by matters of principle. – Lev Khariton Computers are good at swift, accurate computation and at storing great masses of information. The brain, on the other hand, is not as efficient a number cruncher and its memory is often highly fallible; a basic inexactness is built into its design. The brain’s strong point is its flexibility. It is unsurpassed at making shrewd guesses and at grasping the total meaning of information presented to it. – Jeremy Campbell I think that chess is the type of game which belongs entirely to men. In a contest like chess, one is trying to assert oneself, to prove the supremacy of one's own ego. Women have a different psychology. – Garry Kasparov We have nothing in common. I was brought up in the years of social renaissance whereas Kasparov appeared in the period of stagnation. – Anatoly Karpov Analyze a position for more than one day. Because your mental and emotional states change from day to day. Dr Jekyll may find what Mr. Hyde overlooks. – Chris Van Dyck In the shaping of a life, chance and the ability to respond to chance are everything. – Eric Hoffer Show him we're all not children. – Larry Evans (to Anthony Saidy during Saidy’s final round game against Fischer in the 1963-64 US Championship, which Fischer won 11-0) The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one. – H. L. Mencken My father taught me to play. Then I liked the taste of victory. – GM Viorel Bologan (on how he got interested in chess) Alekhine can see five or six times as much as I can, but I have a plan, and that plan sometimes permits me to win. – Max Euwe Our originality shows itself most strikingly not in what we wholly originate but in what we do with that which we borrow from others. – Eric Hoffer His memory was amazing. Just one more example. It happened in Vancouver, Canada in 1971. At the closing of my infamous match against Fischer, Fischer and I were sitting with fellow grandmasters at a banquet and were talking peaceably after the preceding storms. The conversation revolved around the match until my second, Yevgeny Vasyukov, suddenly turned to Fischer: “Bobby, do you remember that in 1958 you spent several days in Moscow and played many blitz games against our chessplayers? I was one of your partners.” “Of course, I remember,” Fischer replied. “And the result?” Vasyukov asked. “Why only the result?” Fischer responded. “I remember the games. One was French.” And he rattled off all the moves! – Mark Taimanov Fischer treats every game as if it were a tournament game, which is why he commits himself totally from the first move to the last, even in a blitz tournament. – Alexey Suetin You know that the estimated number of electrons in the universe is a measly 10 to the 79th power, whereas the number of distinct 40-move games in chess is 25 x 10 to the 115th power. – Larry Parr A phenomenon, like its maker, and flashing, if not from a clear sky, certainly not from any obvious storm center. – Gerald Abrahams (on Fischer’s 11…Ne4 in his “Game of the Century” against Donald Byrne in 1956) This victory, gave me my first taste of fame. If I could beat the guy who beat Botvinnik, perhaps someday I could also beat Botvinnik! – Larry Evans (on his 1947 victory over Yanofsky, who’d defeated Botvinnik the year before in a brilliancy) Another reputation that I helped to make! – Arthur Bisguier (on his 1975 loss in a brilliant game to a 15 year old Seirawan) Bobby was treating this elite as masters treat class-rated players in simultaneous exhibitions. – Larry Parr (on Fischer’s domination of strong GM’s, Candidates, and former world champions in two major blitz tournaments of the early 70’s at the Manhattan Chess Club and Herceg Novi) In 1960 I played a marathon five-minute blitz session with Fischer that lasted perhaps three or four hours. We broke even after about 25 games. In 1970, however, I was no longer a match for him at this speed. – Larry Evans Fischer is a child of a different lifestyle than ours, and all his actions are a result of the upbringing he received. But on the whole, he’s not a bad lad, of pleasing appearance, a bit big and slightly awkward, but with a good natured and very winning smile. - Attributed to Tal, but he denied ever saying it. Almost certainly written by a Soviet editor instead. Fischer is too deeply convinced that he is a genius. – Mark Taimanov Even some Americans (whose names I am not going to disclose, being a neutral party) were not too upset by the defeat of their leading player. It’s time Fischer was shown that after all he is not the genius he styles himself to be. – Mark Taimanov (on Fischer’s loss to Spassky at Siegen in 1970) Bobby is capable of playing chess at any time of the day or night,” he or a Soviet editor wrote. “He can often be seen playing lightning games after a fatiguing evening session of adjournment play. The US Champion plays lightning games with pleasure and, indeed, with a gusto. The only thing that displeases him in chess is – losing. In such cases the pieces are instantly set up again, for a revenge. Failure to take revenge noticeably upsets Fischer. He responds to moves hurriedly and, in an effort to calm himself, keeps repeating that he has an easily won position.” Spassky also supposedly put in a plug for Soviet chess literature by bulletin of the latest USSR Championship. This brought a glint to his eyes, and he exclaimed, ‘That’s just what I need!’ He asked permission to take the bulletin and immediately vanished. Fischer is one of the most diligent readers of our chess magazines. He always follows which of his games are published in our press. – Attributed to Boris Spassky, but almost certainly written by a Soviet chess editor instead. I believe Fischer will win. Would you like the score? 12½ to 8½! They will play 21 games. Fischer will be the world champion for the next 15 years. – Robert Byrne (on the Fischer-Spassky match of ’72) Never. The tree is so large, and the lifetime of the universe is so short, relatively speaking, that it won’t ever happen. Not even close. The problem is theoretically finite. But it is practically infinite because the size is so large. – Unknown chess programmer when asked when computers would solve chess It is also important to remember that he was a real chess gentleman during games. He was always very fair and very correct. – Mikhail Tal (on Fischer) You never know what to expect from Khalifman; he knows every chess line! – Alexander Grischuk Let's be honest about our common human failings. I've been a world-class Grand Master for decades, and I forget things about chess. A chess player's knowledge of the fundamental patterns and concepts can be compared to a city's water reservoir. We always want to add to the pool to increase our resources, but, at the same time, we realize that water - like some of our chess knowledge - is sure to evaporate. – Lev Alburt Dr Lasker, in the New York Evening Post, makes the first Nugent-Black game the subject of comparison as between the old school and the modern, mildly condemning White’s old school method in playing for a trap that involves some risk. Unquestionably the champion is again right from the purely theoretical standpoint. On the other hand, it seems to us that the advocates of the modern school too often ignore the fact that under stress of the varying exigencies of actual play, not the least of which is the time-limit, originality and subtlety of combination may count for more over the board than straining for theoretical precision, the value of which is perhaps paramount only in the post mortem. When a game is laid on the table and the coroner’s inquest held, it is sometimes an easy matter for the jury to decide by just what sudden stroke the untimely end was brought about; and the chess lawyers are ever ready to point out that the blow might have been averted by certain more or less simple measures of precaution. But the autopsy may reveal a complication of diseases that would have proved fatal in a short time at best, and show that the sufferings of the victim must have left him slight chance to formulate the means of deferring the obsequies. Then there are as many instances where the consigned victim has most unreasonably recovered in the face of an adverse diagnosis. In a position that is declared hopeless by the doctors, the patient by some heroic measure not only saves himself from conquest but achieves what, in the circumstances, should be considered a remarkably creditable victory. There is often a resource open to the enterprising that will never be known to the fated plodder in the beaten path. – The Chess Weekly, 19 June 1909 We admire the modern style of a Lasker who accumulates small advantages and relentlessly squeezes his opponent, but the big majority of us would rather play over the games of Morphy than those of Lasker. We want sacrifices and combinations and brilliancy. Let’s do something! Let’s rise up in our wrath and make the masters play at the rate of 40 moves an hour, and in our little matches and tournaments let’s play at the rate of 50 moves an hour! Then more of the public will play and the published games will have more sparkle and spontaneity to them. The natural objection to such a plan is that it would result in blunders and a poor quality of chess. At first, perhaps, but under a fast time limit players would have to use position judgment and that judgment would develop and improve. Trained players generally pick out a good move at sight and waste time only because they have it. For proof, the reader is referred to the quality, brilliancy and accuracy of Pillsbury’s simultaneous blindfold play, which was conducted generally at a speed well above 50 moves an hour. In London, Dr. Lasker, in an exhibition against 20 strong players, averaged over 100 moves an hour and only lost one game. The writer watched the exhibition and did not see the doctor make one real blunder. And these are cases where the attention was divided among many games. In all seriousness, we should like to see the experiment tried in at least one important tournament. – C. S. Howell
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